Must blog

I really don't have a lot of time this week. I set myself a deadline to finish my novel and I'm not meeting it. (The deadline was today.)Unfortunately, a lot of bills, church work and plumbing have gotten in the way. But I did see something in the paper yesterday that I had to write about. I've mentioned the names up here and how wonderfully diverse they are. We have friends named Pitcavage. There are lots of -cavage or -avage endings around here. Believe it or not, this is Lithuanian for "son of" and is also written, ewicz, owicz or owitz. It's evidently an attempt to write phonetically how it sounds. So in the paper there was a society page and here are just a few of the names: Dushok, Konick, Pfriman, Shinko, Tanski, Schwenk, Dodroski, Kepics, Nestorick and my personal favorite, Zaclukashefski. Now if your name was Zaclukashefski, what would be the one name you wouldn't choose as a first name for your son? So, of course, the young man in the society photo is named Zack Zaclukashefski. Go fig.

Bought a car

We knew we would need something more than two Miatas for the winter which is on its way. We never buy new so Michael did his research and decided exactly what we needed. So we bought a cute 1998 Subaru Impreza Outback Sport this week. It has all-wheel drive and will serve us well as we slosh through snow and ice. Now I can drive a car that's only ten years old. My Miata is a 1990 so figure that one out. Usually Michael is the car buyer but he's been way too busy and so I was given the assignment of finding us a car. A tender mercy allowed me to find a one-owner car in great shape with low mileage five minutes from our home. We were looking at a 200 mile radius as Michael was very specific about what model, year and mileage he wanted. I like it a lot and took it out on its first trip yesterday to the grocery store. They were having a sale on canned vegetables and so I stocked up! It's a hatchback and the trunk area in the back is huge! I didn't begin to fill it up. I was sad just for a moment as I rolled the grocery cart up to the car with a huge amount of groceries. It took me right back to days with our Colt Vista. I realized that the thing missing with our new car was four cute children in car seats. If I live to be a hundred and three I will never stop missing my kids.

No bedside manner

I went to two medical appointments yesterday. It is a bust that because of the move I am having to cram in all the visits in just a few months. Seems like all I do these days is go to those annual checkups, dental, eye, etc. Yesterday's doctor was an opthamologist because I had a problem with my retina a year ago last spring. Hm-m-m. The building was a shocker. Kingston is pretty small but this building looked like a mall it was so huge. Then, the office, even though I had called on Friday to correct the error, thought I was a cataract patient, i.e., money in the bank. We got that straightened out and I heard a guy in the check-in booth next to me say, "I didn't come here for my ears, I came to have my eyes checked." Seems that they now offer hearing aid service at this place and the check-in girl was obviously asked to recruit new business. I wasn't asked about my ears amazingly enough. Could it be that I was twenty years younger than most of the people in the waiting room? I had trouble finding my place to sit. I was sent to the maroon chairs but sat down in a "purple" chair instead so the check-in lady had to tell me to move. Almost everyone in the waiting room was over 70 and many were watching a movie about how they do cataract surgery. Instead I just needed to have my retina checked to make sure all was to the good. So everybody got all flustered although one lady did admit it was their fault. This doctor guy, who shall remain nameless, seemed pretty ticked that I was sent to see him in the first place. I picked up the card with his resume on it before I saw him. Magna Cum Laude from Notre Dame and so on and so on. He explained that he was a "sub-specialist" (whatever the heck that is) and that he really wasn't needed for a case like this and that he didn't need to see me again. He did encourage me to use their facility for my annual eye exams and glasses. I explained that I would have to see if his group was on my eye health plan. He told me that if you went to Penney's or Sears you were going to get who knows what. (I loved my optometrist in Denton who worked at Pearle Vision by the way.) This guy obviously owns a percentage of the practice and gets his little cut every time someone buys glasses or a hearing aid. I'm surprised he didn't encourage me to have my ears checked too. I do not take offense easily, but when you visit a mill like this that mints money, you expect nice treatment. Everyone was very gracious except the doctor. Every doctor I had seen in PA before this guy had shown some kind of concern. I wonder how successful this guy would be in Texas where doctors are actually expected to take an interest in the patient?

Facebook

Facebook. I never considered using it until one of my daughters opened up a family group for us. So I had mostly family members as friends and it was pretty quiet. Then a few people found me and I found a few more and I've managed to make contact with a couple of dozen former students. Nice kids all of them. And they are all doing such exciting things and have gotten lots of education and as I predicted, are spread out over the planet. (So many parents told me their kids should not take French because Spanish was what they would need. I always pointed out that they probably wouldn't all stay in Texas! Hah!) I feel much less homesick when I think that I can keep in touch with friends and students this way. I sometimes feel a little elderly in that milieu but being a former teacher gives me some sort of credence. I'm kind of like the faculty members standing around at a high school reunion. I'm not part of the party but maybe some of the kids are glad to see me there.

Missing friends

I haven't posted a picture in a while. This one Michael took at Valley Forge of Washington's headquarters. The stone exterior and even the interior wood are still intact. How cool is that? The picture has nothing to do with today's post!

I spoke to two special friends today from Texas and it was so good to talk to them. I miss so many things like the sunshiney weather, the Mexican food, concerts at UNT, the Dallas Opera, the grocery stores, my writers' group and my old house. But most of all I miss the people I love in the Denton area i.e. my boy, my friends, children of friends and my former students (some of whom have become friends). I used to see my students everywhere--at restaurants, at the grocery store, at the mall and even at the car parts places. Ask Michael. He just got used to it and even found it amusing that we would be at a restaurant and someone would come over yelling "Madame D.." and I would rack my brain to remember their name before they got to my table. He definitely had to play the role of "Mr. Mme D..."

Yesterday I went on a quick run to the grocery store without earrings. This has always been my number one taboo. Going out of the house without makeup is okay in an emergency but earrings are essential. So if I went to the grocery store yesterday without earrings, it's because I knew that I wouldn't see anyone I knew even though I went to the store that's only five minutes away from my house. So sad! Two things need to happen here. One) I need to make more friends and I really am trying to do that. Two) Discipline must be maintained. If earrings were de rigueur in Denton, then they are here too.

Benjamin Franklin

We went to a lecture tonight about Benjamin Franklin at the Back Mountain library. It was fascinating. The lecturer said that all the records of his meetings with the Junto club he organized soon after he came to Philadelphia, the minutes of the American Philosophical Society back to the early 1700s, the documents relating to the first library in America that Franklin founded and almost all of his correspondence still exist. Most of his papers are digitized and available online. I've also been reading a biography of Franklin to prepare myself for this lecture. I've underestimated both his scientific contributions and the importance and extent of his political activities. You don't get the full story when you get your info from a children's book called Ben and Me which features a mouse narrator.

I don't like Ike

It was very frustrating sitting here in Pennsylvania and watching hurricanes storm through the neighborhoods of tons of our family members and friends. Michael's sister and nephew and their families got the worst of it in Houston. They are safe but his sister lost trees and had water coming into the house in three places. Then there's Michael's aunt who lives in Baytown. We haven't heard how her house fared. We heard from his other sister in Marshall earlier today as they were waiting for the storm but I'm thinking they're okay as are my parents in Shreveport since I haven't seen anything in the news about those areas. My son is in Denton so he also was potentially in the path of the storm but it wasn't bad there. And my brother in Rockwall was closer to the center of the storm. His two kids live in that area too. My daughter was on the outside edges in Round Rock and her husband was sitting out the storm with his helicopter in Mississippi. I haven't heard how my cousin did who lives in Sulphur and Michael's niece is worried about the huge sweet potato farm her in-laws and husband own and run in South Louisiana. Who knows how that did? To top it off, my other brother and his son and family had to deal with Gustav in Baton Rouge a few weeks ago. I guess I didn't realize how much of my family is concentrated in those two states. No wonder I hated to leave! Our roots go deep in those two states. I'm hoping that our extended families managed to get through this without too many problems.

Rain Check

The Times-Leader, the local newspaper my grandfather worked for when my dad was a boy, offers garage and yard sale ads with a rain check guarantee. If your garage sale or yard sale is rained out, they'll give you another ad for another weekend. Michael and I have mused about what you would do for an outdoor wedding here. You could invite people from the hours of 10-4, whenever it wasn't raining, for the ceremony. Seriously, it rains a lot here. But it almost never rains all day. So even though the weather channel depressed me before I got here, since every day was listed as partly cloudy, in fact, there are some good moments in almost every day here and the weather is much brighter and sunnier than I thought it would be.

I kept G, a 2-year-old from my church congregation, today while her mother started a new job as preschool teacher. G will go to mother's day out in a few weeks, but I am covering the interim on Tuesdays and Thursdays. G nearly laughed herself silly over the hedgehog puppet I have. Everything the hedgehog did (clap hands, sniff, hide his eyes with his hands), she did. It was great.

I also did online shopping for grandsons and a son-in-law. I found some wonderful things. I hope they like using them as much as I enjoyed buying them.

Yearbook yourself

My daughter found a cute site called "Yearbook Yourself." Check out the latest entry on Puking Pastilles (see the link on the right under family blogs) and compare the photos. This one was taken in 1968. Tell me what you think.

Um, like the weather is so, like, beautiful

Omigosh, it is so, like, beautiful here. Sorry, I did a reading marathon of The Princess Diaries books and it's hard to speak like a normal human. Those books are a lot edgier and funnier than the movies. (Not to say that I don't like the movie because I like just about anything with Julie Andrews.) I almost remember what it was like to be in high school although that was a thousand years ago. I'm trying to get more into the mode of how a younger person talks so that I can finish this novel I'm working on.

The weather is quite unbelievably gorgeous which seems sorry since half the world seems to be flooded or blown away at the moment. And better yet on the air quality topic, a restaurant and public place smoking ban goes into effect in Pennsylvania in just two days! Something I am really looking forward to and that Texas so needs.

Living in PA right now is so fascinating because we're a big state which could go either way and amazingly, with a pop of 250,000, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton corridor is a sizeable population center. Evidently, lots of Pennsylvanians live in small towns and not big cities. Clinton and Obama made visits here before the primaries (on the same day, no less). And Obama just dropped by in a local diner down the road the other day and had banana cream pie. The local rag was impressed that he asked for a to go box. The Republicans will also make their way here I am sure. If the opportunity arises, I should go out and see one of the candidates if they make another public appearance. The last presidential candidate I saw in person was Goldwater for pity's sake at the Shreveport airport. And who remembers AuH2O these days?

Writing a novel

It has taken me a long time to get over teachers who let me know that I wasn't as "creative" as others in my classes in junior high and high school. I still hear those negative messages, in fact. I was taught that creative meant unique, innovative and unexpected. This would put good sci-fi squarely in the most creative realm, I guess.

I now understand creativity a lot better. Creative at its most basic just means making something that wasn't there before. It's more creative in my view if it isn't just like another thing that came before it. In graduate school, I finally had it pounded into me that we are all "standing on the shoulders of giants." This from Newton who was one of the most creative thinkers in the history of mankind. No one creates something out of thin air. It's usually a case of recombining pieces of stuff they've already seen or heard. I also know that some of our greatest composers didn't write music that was shockingly innovative. In fact, their music was well-accepted and even popular. They just perfected the form or the style of their times.

What does this have to do with writing a novel? Everything. Writing a novel is such a long process, you have inevitable doubts about whether or not it's worth the time and effort. And without a great, supportive writers' group like the one I had in Denton, a writer feels all alone some days. So even though I may not be the most creative writer out there, I plan to be one of the most persistent. And as in music, art and just about any other artistic pursuit, hard work counts for a lot.

Fake Versus Real

Hydrox cookies are coming back. For those who don't remember them, they were the original chocolate creme cookie before Oreos.www.hydroxcookies.com Evidently quite a few people think Hydrox cookies are superior and are excited they are being made again. I waited for years to buy another Forever Yours and they finally made a comeback as Milky Way Dark. Evidently these Hydrox people are the same.

Michael and I are really taken with the new Keebler Reduced Fat Club crackers. They are way better than the regular ones which always seemed too greasy to me. These new ones are just perfect.And there are "fake" brands I prefer to the original. I like Tootie Frooties better than the real Fruit Loops. What do you think? What "fake" brand is better than the original? Also, take my poll!

On another note: I have heard from the Louisiana families. Everyone is well but Keith and family in Baton Rouge are struggling with living in a declared disaster area.

Valley Forge

Today we went to Valley Forge, a National Historic Site run by the Park Service system. We went on a brief walking tour with a ranger. At the end, we met a re-enactor who told us about the gear of a soldier. He also demonstrated how to load and shoot a musket. (I downloaded a large file. Be sure and click on the picture of him so that you can see all the details in the photo.)

We drove around with the top down on a beautiful day and listened to an audio CD we bought at the visitor's center. It guided us through the very large park. We visited Washington's headquarters which has a lot of the original elements still intact. Washington's headquarters are behind Michael and to the left in the picture. Behind him is a railroad station they're restoring to use as an interpretative building in the same area.

It's a wonderful place to visit. We even got to participate in a silly game show type story at one of the Once Upon a Nation storytelling benches. People were taking full advantage of the walking trails, picnic areas and green spaces.

This place doesn't have the emotional impact of a battlefield but it's a great learning environment. But thousands died there although not from battle but from disease or hunger. And any time you stand in the same spot that Washington stood, it's a thrill. Just another great site in Pennsylvania to remind you how historic this state really is.